Missing

The film that most profoundly affected me was one that I saw in 1981, Missing by the Greek director Costa Gavras, who had earlier done the very moving film Z about the life and death of a Greek politician who advocated nuclear disarmament.

Missing was different--it starred two Hollywood actors, Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, who were guaranteed box office draws.  The story of the young American couple working in Chile, was taken from the young man's mother's book about their great adventure going horribly wrong.  Although her son was just a cartoonist and not involved in anything too political, he was swept up in the aftermath of the Pinochet coup against Allende in 1973, and was declared missing.  The film shows Sissy Spacek as his wife, and Jack Lemmon as his father, trying to located their husband and son.  Their relationship is somewhat awkward as Jack Lemmon plays an uptight 'good citizen' who blames Sissy Spacek's character for influencing his son to go and live in Latin America.  The story is really about Jack Lemmon's growing realisation that the US government itself was implicated in the coup, and that the ambassador had done nothing to prevent the likely death of his son as he was purportedly involved in leftist activity.

Although he was nominated for an Oscar, it was never likely to win as the film was so 'political'.  I was horrified by the film, read the book from which the story was drawn, and wandered around Washington DC where I was living, in a bit of a daze.  I remember going to Kramerbooks and Afterwords, an early book and coffee shop near Dupont Circle and having a drink at the water fountain, looking up to see a sign with a comment by Voltaire (?) I wish that I could love my country and also love justice.' I read everything I could about what the US had done in Latin America, and I was deeply moved by the conclusion of the book from which Missing was developed,  by the mother of the murdered young man:  'I used to think that I could tend my own little garden, and not think about anything that went on elsewhere.  Now I realise we all have a responsibility to prevent injustice and often death, carried out in our names.' Or something like that....it's stayed with me all these years and is just about the best reason for being involved in something like the Sheila McKechnie Foundation there is!